Saturday saw us in Orlando West, Soweto, at Lebo’s backpackers. What a fantastic business he has built up. He’s used his family home to create a space for foreigners to experience Soweto. There’s a tropical feel with bamboo walls, a pool table and space to hang out that just screams, “Good Times!” And they’ve resurrected the park over the road which is spotlessly clean with children’s play equipment and a long row of bicycles. It’s a real pleasure to see, most inspiring.
Our guide for the day was S, a 24 year old raised in Pretoria West and Soweto. We were on a cycling tour of Soweto (tell that to the punters and see what reactions you get, for example, an American, "That's great! I love Soweto!" A member of my family, "I hope you can ride fast...")
I loved the bike I got to ride – it had raised handlebars like Easy Rider, which means you can sit up straight and not have to lean into the bike, a very cruisey way to travel. We started at Class 3 Meadowlands – at the notorious Mzimhlope hostels, which I believe were occupied by IFP men in previous years. We stood on the very battleground which I remember seeing on various images, the terrifying stories of the conflict between the ANC and IFP. S told us that the hostels have been converted into family units. The area was littered and definitely not receiving services. We rode around some back streets, where people keep their yards immaculate, but the pile of trash in the street and the stinking water flowing through them betrays these peoples’ intention to keep this place in order. The area down at the hostels feels bleak – a vacant plot with bits of broken concrete and people lounging around on them, a sullen air.
Our first stop was a shebeen, just up from the hostels, a corrugated iron shack, with benches round the edges, a group of sorry looking drinkers summonsed up a bit of jolly to greet us. A curious way to start the tour, but the point of it was to share a pot of umqombothi, the bitter traditional beer made of sorghum, yeast, bread. A foul taste, for our delicate western palates, but we appreciated the sentiment of passing the pot, the other patrons imbibed in fitful gulps. I couldn’t get out of the shack soon enough – I’m not into alcoholism anyway, and there is something particularly tragic about a tour to meet the locals whose faces are purple hued and bloated. Maybe I’m missing something here, but this was not the highlight.
From 3rd class we passed through 2nd and then 1st, or Beverly Hills, where Winnie Madikizela-Mandela lives (one of the old ladies in Centurion asked me if I saw the restaurant she runs on her pavement, which I think is supposed to be a bad or scandalous thing, but there was no such providor). Then past Bishop Tutu’s house, which is on a really busy corner of the famous Vilakazi Drive, where Mandela’s old red brick house stands, now a flash museum.
Sol took us past the station where a beer hall once stood, and explained to us that the students in the uprising destroyed the beer halls because they needed their fathers to help them, and to sober up and not be instigating domestic violence. It made me think about Mandrax, Black Label, and how drugs and alcohol are political. And what the story is now, with tik and heroin here, and whatever else people are shrinking their brains with, and what level of official involvement supports this trade and disempowerment. A good film to make, methinks.
I got terribly sad throughout the day, as every corner we turned, every group of people we drove past, smiled and greeted us. The kids chased us for high fives and the old mamas waved to us. This country crashes my understanding, I cannot comprehend what has occurred here, I have not been present to integrate the emotional progress that allows a friend I bumped into in 7th Street, Melville, who, when I told her how sad I had become at seeing pictures of the occupied townships in the seventies, waved her hand and said, “Everyone’s forgotten about that, apartheid, we’ve moved on.”
That night, as I sat in bed digesting the day, I thought that maybe that’s my job, or the job of us who left, maybe we are the ones to remember. Such tremendous events could never be forgotten, certainly compartmentalised or defused, but, for instance, the images at the Hector Pietersen Museum had me devastated. The green Cortina carrying the snipers who felled random Africans, the tanks and the white soldiers with their tear gas and guns to deliver rubber bullets and live ammunition. I’m sorry dear people, even if you have moved on, I have not.
I related this concern to my friend E, from whom I learned many Yiddish phrases, and said that perhaps some of us had to leave, so that we would retain the memory. She sat up straight and said, “Yad Vashem – Lest we forget”, which I believe is appropriate. Who of us will remember, whilst we move forward at such a terrifying pace? Who will remember so that never again, we must never again allow it to happen, ever again.
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